The Love Project- Romantic Love

In August I did my last post in the Love Project series on the subject of family. I mentioned then that I'd covered all of the areas (self love, romantic love, friendship and family) that I wanted to but thought I might carry on because I felt there was more to say. So today I'm going to focus on romantic relationships again. :)



Being single

There is a lot of stigma about being single. Relationships are seen as the be all and end all of everything and being part of a happy couple is what lots of people aspire to. If you're single it can be really hard to watch other people in relationships and wonder, "What's wrong with me?" Especially this time of year which is about togetherness, so if you're not in a relationship it can make you think more about being alone. (The same applies if you aren't spending Christmas with your family or don't have many family members around you).

It can help to realise that there's nothing wrong with being single. This is a good article on why it's ok to be single: http://adventuringhome.com/how-to-be-single/

I also just found this post about being happy as a single person: https://www.meetmindful.com/how-to-be-a-happy-single-in-a-couples-world/

The problem is that it seems to be a bit of a contradiction, people tell you that if you want to attract love then you should be happy being single. But if you're happy being single then why would you want a relationship?! Maybe we should take the viewpoint that some people have about how it's fine to be single but it would be nice to have a partner to share your life with. (This is mentioned in the post above under this section: 'Another belief many people have is “I’m incomplete without my significant other.” ').

This post gives good advice on things single girls should know about love: http://sheismore.com/5-things-every-single-girl-should-know-about-love/

It is God oriented but if you're not a Christian or not particularly religious (like me) you can still take something from it. :)

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Having K-pop programmes on British TV!
Demi from Rockstar Priestess' Selkie Surrender Challenge- I've been doing it this month.
Feeling better- I haven't been well with flu.
Yule aka the Winter Solstice coming up
Reading magic/Wicca books and websites
Christmas
Christmas chocolate!
Christmas trees and decorations

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

The PDSA- they provide pet care for only a donation.
Bonfire Night
Discovering new music
Chloe Wigan of One Infinite Life's 28 Day Gratitude Project
Bewitched being back on
Chocolate advent calendars- already got mine! lol.
Having a new family car- the other one didn't work out.
Connecting with others online in positive ways

Bonus:

Getting the vampire anthology book Dracula's Guest from the library!

Healing Health Anxiety- Part 2

Last month I started a series on healing health anxiety. You can read the first post here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2016/10/healing-health-anxiety-part-1.html


In that post I spoke about what health anxiety (HA) is and looked at methods for healing it, concentrating on therapy and self help techniques. This time I'm looking at it from more of a spiritual perspective. So here we go. :)

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, just someone who has health anxiety, so please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)
 
Update 14/11/23: I've removed and replaced some links to make the post look neater.

Understanding thoughts  

When you're worrying you can feel trapped by your thoughts, so it might help to read about thoughts themselves. Here's a good post and video by Kajal Pandey on understanding them: https://www.kajalpandey.com/blog/how-to-understand-your-thoughts/

Healing Health Anxiety- Part 1

This is part of a series of posts on healing health anxiety. This is something I've been trying to do for a while, it's an ongoing process for me. I was originally planning to do just one post but it was turning into a really long one, so I decided to do a series instead. :)

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, just someone who has health anxiety, so please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)



What is health anxiety?

As I've mentioned before I have health anxiety. If you're not familiar with it, it's anxiety centred specifically on your health. Another name for it is hypochondria but they may not be exactly the same thing, because with health anxiety (HA) you often experience physical symptoms. For more on the subject you can read this article: http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/articles/healthanxiety

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Hallowe'en chocolates!
Chocolate coins- they're already in the shops!
Jessica Dimas' Anything Can Be LOA bundle- I just bought it in the sale she had.
The Awakened State site
Gabrielle Bernstein's new book The Universe Has Your Back
Free eBay listings
Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper- I don't read much fantasy so it made a change.
Going to the beach today


Bonus:

Hallowe'en/Samhain coming up!

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

The summerlike weather we had a couple of weeks ago
Madron/Autumn Equinox
The golden light at this time of year
Having a working oven (still grateful for the new cooker!)
Getting a new family car- although we're having some problems with it, I'm glad to have got one.
Going to the beach recently
Going to the park
Trying on perfumes in Marks and Spencer!

Affirmations

Lately I've been working with affirmations. For a quick background on them check out my post on the Law of Attraction: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2013/08/law-of-attraction.html

Affirmations are a manifestation technique but they are also used in other self help contexts, such as if you want to feel better about yourself or heal a health condition. So you could use them as part of the Law of Attraction (LOA) to manifest a job, car or partner etc. but you also could use them for self confidence or to heal back pain or a broken leg, help with period pain or toothache etc.

I haven't been that into affirmations in the past, although I have used them a bit (a few years ago I wrote some I read about in the book 21st Century Goddess and left them in random places). Then earlier this year I read Louise L. Hay's book You Can Heal Your Life and worked with some affirmations from that. Also I've been coming across a lot of blog posts about them recently, so thought I'd had a go with doing more affirmation work.

Here are some good affirmation resources. :)

The Love Project- Family

Following on from my last post in The Love Project series I'm going to write more about family today. You can read my last post here: http://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-love-project-family.html



Birth/Biological Family

I remember reading somewhere about how our families are our first experience of love. Our relationships with our families are the first ones we form in life. Things that happen in childhood can affect us deeply and we often carry trauma into adulthood. Also sometimes you can get stuck in old family patterns, like with mental health or a tendency to addiction. For example there is a history of depression in my mum's family. I'm going to share a few links about healing family trauma and patterns.


First of all here's a link to a website about healing family trauma: http://healingfamilytrauma.com/

Gratitude List + Intention Setting

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Blue skies
Pam Grout's E-Cubed book- been reading it.
The Adventuring Home website
Rain on roses
Truffles' brownies
Being able to bake again now my new cooker is installed!
Emmanuel Dagher healing audios
Indrani Phillips' Manifesting Maven FB group


Also since today is 8th August (8-8) we've been setting intentions in the Manifesting Maven Facebook group. I thought I would also share mine here:

I intend to heal my health anxiety and manifest my dream man.

Happy 8-8 everyone! :)

Pinterest as an LOA Tool

A quick note about this post: I got the idea for it over a month ago and started it but hadn't got very far. I thought maybe it was a bit of a weird idea comparing Pinterest to LOA and maybe I should write about something else. I think I just have a lot of self doubt and thought it might not be a good idea for a post. But then the other day I came across this post which is a similar idea but with Instagram: http://jessicadimas.com/3-ways-law-attraction-just-like-algorithm/

So I thought I might as well go ahead and write this post! lol. I haven't read the other one properly yet because I want to just write my own ideas first. :) I'm referring to the Law of Attraction aka LOA, which you can read more about here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2013/08/law-of-attraction.html


I'm a fan of Pinterest. If you haven't heard of it, it's a website where you "pin" pictures/images to boards you create. You can add them from other sites, upload your own or search for them on Pinterest itself and then add them to your boards. E.g. You could create a board of places you want to visit, recipes you'd like to make or your favourite films, music etc. It's also good for inspirational quotes and pictures. It can be very addictive! The site is described as "the world's catalog/ue of ideas". It's also classed as a social network because you follow other users and can comment on their pins and message them personally.

I was thinking recently that Pinterest reminds me of descriptions of the Law of Attraction, how what you focus on expands. Because when you pin something it leads you to more boards on those themes and recommends pins for you. So If I pin about the reality show Teen Mom, I'll get more Teen Mom pins recommended to me on the site itself or by email (Pinterest tells me I may like these pins based on a board I've created). So the more I pin, the more similar things it brings in!

Following others is another way that you find stuff you like. Their pins start showing up in your feed and so you have more to pin on the subjects you're interested in.

New Helpful Articles Library

I don't normally post on a Thursday but I've just created a Helpful Articles Library page, so I thought I'd do a quick post. It's a page of links to useful self help/persononal development and Law of Attraction links. Hope you enjoy it. :) Check it out it here or from the link on the right side of the blog: http://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.co.uk/p/ive-been-into-self-help-since-i-was.html

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Buses and taxis- been having car problems.
Summer!
Libraries
Having my computer back- had computer problems recently.
My local computer shop
Pam Grout's books E-Squared and E-Cubed-I read the first one and have just reserved the second at the library.
Re-playing PS2 games- I've been playing Clock Tower 3 and Haunting Ground recently.
Discovering new self help/personal development websites

The Love Project- Family

Now it's time to move on to the family section of The Love Project! This is going to be quite a personal post which is scary for me but as I've said before, I'm trying  to be more open and vulnerable and I've been inspired by others sharing. :)

While we often love our families (I understand that not everyone does), they can also be difficult to get along with. Unlike with friends we don't necessarily choose our families. (In spiritual circles there's the theory that we do choose them before we're born but we don't tend to consciously choose them on earth). They are our first relationships so family is very important.

These days there are lots of different types of familes and it's really interesting to see. I'm mixed race (African and English, little bit Scottish!) and despite my parents splitting up when I was little, it was still normal to me to come from an interracial family so I love seeing more mixed families represented on TV and just seeing them round day to day. Gay families are also more "visible" nowadays and I think it's good that there are options for gay couples to have children. Single parent families have been stereotyped over the years and have had stigma attached but I hope that's changing too.

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Buses
The 3rd series of The X-Files starting on Spike
Harris & Hoole- I wanted a McDonald's iced frappe last week but their machine was broken so I had a mocha iced coffee from Harris & Hoole instead.
Sitting in a display Mini at my local shopping centre!
Red velvet cake- been sampling different types, lol.
Reading e-books on Kindle
The start of summer!
Litha coming up

Healing Mind and Body

 Last updated: February 2019


I'm currently working on a blog page of articles that I've been finding helpful on my self help/personal development journey so far. (Similar to my Resources page). I intend for it to have quite a few categories and links, so while I'm still working on it, I thought I'd also do a post about healing your mind and body. I'm including Law of Attraction (LOA) links. For more on the Law of Attraction you can read my post about it:  https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2013/08/law-of-attraction.html

Healing is something I've been working on for years in relation to my mental health, due to having depression, OCD and anxiety since I was a teenager. In recent years I've been trying to eat more healthily and have lost some weight. In books and articles I've read they mention how the mind and body are linked, so I think it's good to take care of both your mind and body.


There are some things I like to do which help with my mental wellbeing:

Reading and re-reading LOA books
Reading blogs/sites
Writing exercises (eg. "body journalling", see below)
Writing stories- I've been writing since I was little and sometimes I find it relaxing just sitting there and writing.

Also check out a post I did a couple of years ago on my healing tools: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2014/04/my-healing-tools.html


Now here are some useful links. I've divided them into categories.



Wellbeing

A couple of links on general wellbeing.

http://jianiteo.com/four-dimensions-wellbeing

http://enlightenyourlovelife.com/keeping-it-simple-universal-law/

http://kriscarr.com/blog/kris-carr-self-care-planner/

http://www.eltscott.com/a-guide-to-mindfulness/**

http://www.wellandgood.com/good-advice/5-mini-mindfulness-methods-that-you-can-do-anywhere/slide/7/

https://melissaambrosini.com/health/my-8-daily-non-negotiables-for-supercharged-productivity/*

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Blossom trees
Getting new library books
Blue sparkly nail varnish
Sainsbury's Red Velvet Triple Layer cake- we had it for my mum's birthday.
The hotter weather
My belly dance group BD4U's 3rd show coming up this month
Buying new songs on iTunes with my Maximiles voucher
Sarah Centrella's Hustle Believe Receive- I just bought the e-book version.

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Leftover Easter chocolate!
The weather lightening up a bit
The Magic book by Rhonda Byrne- I got it for my birthday last month and I'm working through it now.
Maximiles rewards- I just bought a £25 iTunes voucher with my points.
McDonald's caramel iced frappes- I normally have mocha but have had a couple of caramels recently for a change!
Writing letters/penpalling
Listening to more new music
Getting lifts with friends

Acting As If (LOA)

What does it mean to "act as if"? It's a phrase you hear a lot if you follow the Law of Attraction aka LOA. My understanding of it that is when you want to manifest something, you act as if it's already in your life, as if it's happening now and eventually your vibration will change, and it will show up in your life for real. Here are a few posts on the concept: 

Update 22/8/24: I've updated this as some links had gone.

https://goodvibeblog.com/acting-as-if/

https://www.goodvibeblog.com/waking-up-as-if/

https://www.livelifemadetoorder.com/blog/law-of-attraction-tips-on-acting-as-if/

Also here's a good post from Melody Fletcher on Deliberate Receiving about it, although Melody suggests that you "feel as if" you have you want because what you're really after is a feeling: https://melodyfletcher.com/2013/06/20/dear-loa-what-does-acting-as-if-mean/


As Kelli Cooper recently wrote in this blog post on Life Made To Order, sometimes you've been studying things for a while and then you have moments where you find that they sink in more, you understand them on another level. I felt this with the "acting as if" concept a few months ago when I bought the perfume I wanted. I did a post about it which you can read here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/manifestation-story.html

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

My birthday presents and cards
Birthday wishes
Red velvet cake
Birthday meal at Nando's
Listening to new music
Slightly longer days
Gabrielle Bernstein's books Add More ~ing to Your Life and Spirit Junkie
Louise L Hay's You Can Heal Your Life book

The Love Project- Friendship

Carrying on with my Love Project posts on friendship, I thought I would share some links about forgiveness. As I mentioned in the first friendship post I've had a difficult time with friendships in the past and sometimes I've struggled to forgive others (one ex friend in particular). If you've had a similar experience, here are a couple of links from Positive Provocations on forgiveness:

http://positiveprovocations.com/2016/02/22/forgive-to-truly-heal-healing-through-forgiveness-series-part-1/

http://positiveprovocations.com/2016/02/29/3-simple-steps-to-forgive-and-heal-bad-memories-healing-through-forgiveness-series-part-2

I think that if you're struggling with feelings of anger or upset due to past friendships, it will be really helpful for you to move on and heal if you address the issue and try to forgive and let it go. You have to be ready though. I've tried to forgive in the past but still been clinging on to it. I'm going to try again. :) I've also been reading Louise L. Hay's book You Can Heal Your Life and she mentions forgiveness in there.

Also if you've had problems in the friendship department, you may find it hard when it comes to romantic relationships because you struggle to trust people and are afraid of getting hurt. (I know that's the case for me). And like romantic relationships, friendships can require you to be vulnerable, although not as much.

In her books Gabrielle Bernstein talks about how relationships are our biggest teachers and she recommends forgiveness. She calls it "throwing down an F bomb". I've read May Cause Miracles and Miracles Now in past years and I've just finished Add More ~ing to your Life and started Spirit Junkie. Gabrielle (or Gabby) follows the teachings of A Course in Miracles and Marianne Williamson. If you're interested in Gabby's books you can find links to them on my Resources page: http://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.co.uk/p/resources.html

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Imbolg
Pancake Day
Getting new slippers
The new series of The X-Files starting
Going to a Turkish restaurant with my belly dance group for our (belated!) Christmas meal
Chocolate Easter eggs- already in the shops!
Kinder Mini Eggs
The Winter trilogy- I'm currently reading the last one, A Witch Alone

Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Going to the beach
Chocolate milk
Cadbury Mini Eggs- they're in the shops already!
Mike Dooley's (TUT) 30 Days of Infinite Possibilities project
Spyro: A Hero's Tail- I've been replaying it.
Library books
Wimpy
Amanda Galatica's free 30 Day Prosperity Course- Get it when you sign-up at her site: http://amandagalactica.com/

Resources Page

I don't normally post on here on a Tuesday but I just created a new Resources page, so I thought I'd do a quick post about it.

It contains a list of all the self help/personal development and Law of Attraction (LOA) websites and books I've found useful over the years. I hope other people find them useful too. :)

It's on the sidebar on the right of the blog and I'll also link to it here: http://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.co.uk/p/resources.html

Manifestation Story

I write about the Law of Attraction (LOA) on here and today I thought it would be nice to share a manifestation story as an example that it does work. :)

I like to go in Marks & Spencer (department store) sometimes and have a look around. There's a perfume they sell there called Rose Imaginaire by Roger & Gallet. I've liked it for ages but at £32 it was a bit expensive for me (also £32 felt like "too much" to spend on perfume). So whenever I went in there I would try on some from the sample bottle they had. Sometimes I would go in there just to try it on, lol.

Then just before Christmas I went into Marks to try some on again and there was a saleswoman who was selling the Roger & Gallet perfumes. I tried different samples and she gave me a sample of another one called Fleur de Figuier. I found out from her that they do smaller bottles for £17. (I think the smaller bottles were there before but I hadn't noticed them).  I'd received some money from a relative for Christmas, so a few days after talking to the saleswoman I went back and bought the smaller bottle of Rose Imaginaire for £17. :)

Here's a picture of the perfume: